


The Sharpest Lives

by mythbusterposey



Series: Oblivion [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friendship, Fugitives, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Star-crossed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5860918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>{Act III}</p>
<p>Rey and Kylo Ren are full-fledged fugitives, and their luck escaping the First Order and the Resistance is running out quickly. Working together isn't going to cut it, this time.</p>
<p>Shameless Angst on a theme of highly-flammable Reylo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a kiss and i will surrender

**Author's Note:**

> Two fugitives, both alike in dignity  
> In fair Coruscant, where we set our scene.  
> From galactic grudge break to new mutiny  
> Where Jedi blood makes Jedi hands unclean.  
> From forth the fated bloodlines of these once-foes  
> A pair of star-crossed Force users hide their lives.  
> The fearful passage of their pain-mark'd love,  
> And the continuance of their alliances' rage,  
> Which, but Rey and Kylo Ren's retrieval naught could remove.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo Ren let off some steam and try to stay away from feelings.
> 
> Or, You're Just Like An Angel, I Wish I Was Special
> 
> Chapter titles from The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance.

“If there’s one thing I can say to Master Luke’s detriment,” Rey says, as she parries a blow aimed at her shoulder, “It’s that convening with the powerful dead will never compare to an actual sparring partner.”

 

She gets a grunt in response from Kylo Ren, who rains blows down atop her with his glowing purple lightsaber. The quillons near his hands are detracted for now, but she knows it would make no impact on his nerves. They never did before. She’s practicing with just the blue-side blade of her own saber, developing a very unique fighting style. It’s been mere hours since they’d completed their sabers; they were both too excited to remain idle with them in the cruiser.

 

They’re in an abandoned duracrete-walled structure about ten kilometers from the heart of the Coruscanti black market. The evening sheds some hazy light over the streets, but the inside of their temple lets no light in. They had succumbed to their heightened emotions, at first, igniting their sabers and watching the light bend and swirl and slash through the hot, thick darkness. Kylo Ren’s prominent nose and sharp cheekbones cast stark shadows across his face in the gleam of his saber. Her twin blades had illuminated both sides of her, giving her an angelic glow he’s distracted by every few moments. She had playfully thrown strike at him, sweeping upward, aimed for one of the basic combat zones that Luke had most likely taught her.

 

When he’d been training with the Knights of Ren, there was almost no emphasis done on forms or footwork. Due to his background, having a strength in Niiman and Juyo primarily, it made him the obvious choice as Master. His name itself means King. His peers among the rest of the Seven had sneered at the epithet, loathing him and spilling jealousy with equal fervor. It was one of the reasons he was going through something of an identity crisis; he was no king, he was no longer Kylo Ren. He was no Jedi, he wasn’t even a padawan or apprentice. He could no longer hope to be Ben Solo again. He knows Rey thinks of him as Kylo Ren. He doesn’t blame her. He’d made one hell of a first impression on her on Takodana.

 

“Are you distracted?” she asks, breathing hard after another bout of perfect deflection.

 

“Out of practice.” he mutters, barely audible over the whine of their weapons. She wonders if his mask was utilized to amplify his voice, for it was so soft just on its own. “Switch to offense.” he says, changing his lightsaber to his other hand. He hasn’t done this, switching hands, since he was about twelve. After the attack on the Jedi training academy, he didn’t have the luxury of being allowed to fail, so he just improved his other skills to their peak.

 

He would never trade the skill and power he’d learned from the Dark side, if it meant only ever using the Light side for the rest of his life. Even if it meant going home, even it it meant a whole pardon and redemption of his spirit and soul. He would live as he had, one foot on both sides of the imaginary line, the Dark and the Light. He could not work any other way. He waves his saber to her to indicate she’s free to attack when ready.

 

Her face is blank, but no longer passive. She siphons off of the quiet rage that sings eternally in his blood, her fury bleeding through the Force, making her saberstaff spark even before their blades have touched. The air is hot and electric as she advances, her footwork strong and sure.

 

The spar is short but exhausting. His left arm is screaming from the brunt of her downward strokes. Through this, he’s enchanted by the gleaming blue she’s favored tonight. “Switch to yellow!” he says above the grinding clash of their blades. Her eyes meet his and he falls back from where her blue blade is suddenly gone, a split second where she’s cast in just his purple light, but the room brightens once more from the sunbeam shooting from her saber. His eyes are wide, reflecting each beam ignited between them. She presses against his mind and gleans some of his awe that’s served as his distraction the whole night. She wonders briefly how he made the unstable red saber she’d destroyed on Starkiller Base.

 

It’s done when Rey gets him on his back, her yellow blade pointed at his face, the blue one streaming back, two inches from her face and neck. The Force is embodied in her ferocity, vitality, and unchallenged control. He bares his neck to her mercy, yielding at last. This breaks her from her trance, and she disengages both beams. She stands engulfed in violet light, an avenging angel. She calls the rest of her quarterstaff to her hand through the Force, and hides the saber once more. She sits next to him, on the side not holding the lightsaber.

 

They’re quiet now, not looking at one another. He presses into her mind, a nudge, an apology. She shakes it off easily but still says nothing. They both catch their breath. He was right, before. They were both slightly out of practice. He watches her take her hair down from it’s secure clasp, something she’d invented from the spare lightsaber parts they’d procured. He smiles at it and picks it up from the floor, letting his lightsaber disengage. They are now engulfed in the dark, the only sound the soft clinking of the trinket in his hands. He lets out a long sigh.

 

“Do you want to go back?” she asks, feeling his presence in the Force like it was something she could touch. She could, if she wanted.

 

“ _ Can _ we?” she hears how loaded of an answer that is, but as she’s done before with him, she ignores it.


	2. you're in time for the show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Order makes their move on Coruscant.
> 
> Or, Stolen Away.
> 
> Chapter titles from The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance

If the warehouse was quiet between them, the cruiser is dead silence. Rey usually gets this way when she has probed into Kylo Ren’s emotions. After suffering from feeling nothing for so long, to feel his emotions running so high as they do is jarring and unsettling. He gives her space. Sometimes after she ‘balances him out’ they both get like this. He makes them dinner, as he normally does. He didn’t grow up completely serviced by servants and machines. That was one of the important things Han Solo had taught him about life.  _ If you can’t do something yourself, you should ask for help.  _ Being shy at a young age had made him a wealth of knowledge, too prideful even then to ask for help. He’d always had his nose in a book.

 

He feels her interest spark, and she wants to know more about him as a child. Because he hates seeing her in such a funk, he supposes a few memories can’t hurt. He lets his mind wander.

 

_ He’s about three. The walls are a rust-colored red, aged and cozy. Warm yellow light streams in through an open window, and he can see the forest outside. He’s always lived in the forest, with Mommy and Daddy. He can hear birds singing. It’s a very good day. He gets to see Uncle Luke today. He’s tidying up his little play area in front of the sofa, all his blocks on one side and all his small ships on the other. He likes the ships the best. He wants to go on the Falcon again. He loves going to space with Mommy and Daddy. _

 

_ He cleans and cleans and cleans, and when he looks up, it’s nighttime and he’s hungry and alone. No one has come round all day, to see the young boy in the cleanest living room in the system. _

 

“You had a sad childhood.” she says softly, the first words spoken between them since their return.

 

“Was yours any different?” he asks just as softly.

 

He watches her eyes drift shut a moment before he’s assaulted by memories from her youth.

 

_ The sand is between her teeth and she doesn’t remember a time where things didn’t taste like it was biting you back. She went out with a few scavengers today, and wandered off on her own. The Graveyard of Giants, they call it. She climbs into the business end of a thruster, grunting with the effort and hissing at the hot sun-baked metal against her little palms. But she makes it up, and marvels in the haunted scene before her. Dust particles, different from the sand in so many ways, float down unhurriedly. She watches some scaled rodent dart across what used to be a blast door, leaping from one end of the wall to the other. _

 

_ Wonder washes away her usual misery, as she stands in the shade, on the ruins of giants. _

 

He’s blinking away the blinding sun from his eyes, memories slipping from between his fingers as she pulls them back. “Not all bad, then?”

 

“Not all bad.”

 

They eat dinner with one another and lay down in their mattress together. “Do you want to train again tomorrow?” he asks, moments before sleep.

 

“I want to train every day.”

 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

 

To his eternal surprise, she leans up and presses her lips against his in a soft and quick kiss. She pulls back before he can react, and curls against his chest. They lay wide awake, pretending to sleep.

 

***

 

The First Order has a private hyperspace expressway leading straight to Coruscant from the current location of the  _ Finalizer _ , and this proves to be one of the first advantages in what happens next.

 

Three boarding teams, chock full of the highest-trained stormtroopers in the fleet, land on Coruscant, on one of the tallest and most severe-looking skyscrapers. General Hux had wanted to accompany, but was denied the pleasure of watching Kylo Ren walk back in restraints. In his stead, the incumbent Master of the Knights of Ren, Shamis Ren, had gone. A severe woman that favors daggers and wild, terrifying threats, she’s succinctly more professional than her predecessor, but (as he’s beginning to see) bears a striking resemblance in attitude. Her fits of rage are certainly fewer and further between than Kylo Ren’s had been, choosing to instead internalize her anger and fury. For this, General Hux (and his replacements budget) is relieved.

 

He monitors the landing through the holoviewers on each of his stormtroopers’ helmets. Captain Phasma stands next to the Knight onboard. He didn’t personally watch Kylo Ren’s boardings on the bridge, instead choosing to watch them in his personal office, but now he dispassionately witnesses this mission.

 

Supreme Leader Snoke’s orders were confusing.  _ Take the girl; leave Kylo Ren on Coruscant _ . By any means possible.

 

And the General wasn’t keen on failing again.

 

***

 

In the morning, he suggests they do some lighter training, and leave their precious sabers back on the cruiser. They aren’t stupid enough to go out unarmed, which is why they have two of the sabers taken from the jungle planet clipped at their sides. They’d started with a run, for distance. The Force prolonged their stamina, keeping their breaths even and paced. However, by the time they’re fifteen kilometers out of the black market, they’re both a little winded. Space travel doesn’t allow much room for physical exercise. They go through their saber forms together, far enough away from civilization to risk igniting their sabers. The thrill of wielding their weapons is exciting, but honestly dull compared to the sabers they’d crafted themselves.

 

After a bout of sparring and some calisthenics along one long, straight road, they turn east toward the city, taking off at an easy jog. It shouldn’t take more than a half hour to get back to their cruiser. They keep up a conversation.

 

“I was thinking of heading into the market again, toward the scrapyard.” he says, hair bouncing around his features. He’s shirtless, and the gleam of sweat on his hard muscles is distracting her.

 

“You want to work on the cruiser?” she asks, giving him one of the bands off of her wrist again. He’d broken the one she gave him back on the jungle planet.

 

He gives a grunt in affirmation. “One can never stop improving on mechanics.”

 

“That’s for sure.” she says. They jog along in silence again, the skyscrapers looming up larger the closer they get. “Have you thought about adding a weapons system to it?”

 

“It’s got basic blaster cannons—”

 

“That’s  _ hardly _ a weapons system.” she rolls her eyes. “Something with more...oomph.” she waves her hand to emphasize before it curls back up loosely to swing at ribs-level.

 

“A good defense is the best offense.” he says, pulling his hair back behind his ears and securing it with the elastic.

 

“So you want to work on the shields.” she concludes.

 

“The ones on the  _ Millennium Falcon  _ are par none, I’ll admit. But I’m working on a way to get the same results from the thermal blocker without freezing the passengers.” he gives her a sidelong glance.

 

“Har har.” she bites, as they turn a corner.

 

They feel it at the same time, a great disturbance in the Force. They stop, a little winded, arms akimbo. “Do you—?”

 

“Feel it too?” they look at one another, then upward as three First Order trooper transports descend from the clouds. “Go!” he shouts, pushing her down an alley. The bond is ringing like a bell between them, clear and direct. He doesn’t have to tell her when to turn or where to go. They end up somewhere near the cruiser, in view of it but not too close.

 

Stormtroopers are swarming the market, blasters raised, shouting in that horribly mechanical way they have. She watches the shopkeepers, the people she’s come to know and even like, be accosted and assaulted by the troopers. Her anger boils up inside of her, and the only thing that keeps her from going down there and slicing down all the white-plated cowards is Kylo’s hand on her bicep. She feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as he gets a sense through the Force. His head whips round, eyes flicking through every face in the crowds faster than she thought possible. When he zeroes in on the person he’d been looking for, his whole face tightens into an emotionless scowl.

 

“What is it?” she whispers. “Who do you see?”

 

“It’s one of the Knights of Ren.” he says, voice dropping to a low growl. “And the Stormtrooper Battalion Commander, Captain Phasma. They must be coming for me. Someone in the black market must have been an informant.”

 

“What do we do? We can’t fight off sixty stormtroopers, a stormtrooper commander, and a Knight all by ourselves!” she hisses, just before a low whine swoops low overhead, in the form of an X-Wing T-70, S-coils locked together as it slices through the market streets. She recognizes Poe Dameron’s designations. “Oh, great, the Resistance is here, too, probably for me.” she groans.

 

“Come on. Maybe we can make it to the cruiser and get out before they find us.” he takes her hand and pulls her along with him for a second before he lets go and lets her run on her own. She keeps up, and even though her lungs and legs are screaming (couldn’t the First Order have come  _ before _ they ran 30 kilometers?!) she pushes on. They make it to the fence of the lot their cruiser is parked in.

 

“Alright, I’m gonna go first and you follow after.” he says. “It’d be too much movement to go unnoticed.” She nods, emotions running high. The air is so thick with tension you could cup it in your hands before you. She watches him take off toward the cruiser, her attention solely on him.

 

“There you are.” she hears a moment before her consciousness slips away from her like sand.

 

***

 

Kylo Ren feels Rey slipping unconscious and bolts up out of the chair, the delay in start-up causing the whole ship to shut off, a safety feature he’d implemented. He’s out of the cruiser before he thinks twice, locking it securely behind him. He doesn’t care about the ship. He follows Rey’s faint Force signature through the bond. She’s being transported, moved. His heart is pounding hard in his chest as he tracks her.

 

It starts to rain. He makes it as far as to be in view of the three ‘trooper shuttles, before he’s brought to his knees through the Force. He recognizes Shamis Ren’s Force signature holding him down, but knows she’s not strong enough to hold him in place on her own; she has Snoke’s help. He struggles at the barrier and grinds his teeth, pushing back against her.

 

He spots Rey, slung carelessly over a battle litter. One of her hands hangs over the side. He presses harder, slashing against the Force barrier with his mind. He can’t let her go, he can’t let her go.

 

_ Take me instead!  _ he calls through the Force, to Shamis Ren, to Snoke. His former Master responds.

 

**_You are unnecessary to me, Kylo Ren. You are unworthy of your title, and the most useless Force user in the galaxy. I leave you to die at your earliest convenience._ **

 

By the time Snoke wrenches his presence from his mind wholly, taking his consciousness with him, Rey was already on board, and being lifted into the Coruscant atmosphere. He remembers the feeling of pitching forward, then nothing.


	3. where the animals go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our fugitives, now prisoners, orient themselves without one another.
> 
> Or, I Have Heard The Force Singing, Each To Each; I Do Not Think That It Will Sing To Me.
> 
> Chapter titles from The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance.

It takes awhile for him to wake, and he knows he’s been heavily sedated by the sluggish movements of his body. His eyes blink but don’t see, only taking in pieces. Colors. Lights.

 

His heart slams against his chest as his memory returns to him, surging forth like a tidal wave. His focus is laser-sharp, remembering in full resolution.

 

 _Rey is gone. The First Order took her. Shamis Ren is incumbent Master of the Knights. Snoke wants Rey._ **_Useless_ ** _. Rey is gone._ **_Unworthy_ ** _. ReyisgoneReyisgoneReyisgone-_

 

“Calm down, or we’ll put you under again.” an annoyed voice says, above and in front of him. He take note of his restraints, clamped tightly over his wrists, ankles, forehead, chest, and neck. He feels the needles in his arm, and knows at least one is connected to something lethal. He’s at some unseen person’s mercy.

 

“What do you want?” he grits out, putting as much rage as he can behind his words. His interrogator crosses his arms over his chest, coming into focus slowly. He recognizes the man as the Resistance pilot, and a million thoughts fly through his head at once. “Where is Rey?” he practically shouts.

 

“That’s not how this works, Ren.” he spits the title at him. “ _We_ ask _you_ questions, and not the other way around. We’re gonna give you the chance to give up some information about the First Order, and then—”

 

“I’m not telling you anything.” He tries to press into the pilot’s mind, as he’d done over a year ago when they’d met the first time (in starkly different conditions) yet when he reaches through with the Force, he finds he has no connection. Severed. Gone. He fights the panic rising in his chest. “Where am I?!” he demands to know.

 

“So many questions.” the pilot tuts, and why should he be given such an important job like interrogating Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, Commander of the First Order, when he treats the man himself with such nonchalance? “Let’s try this again. You agree to inform on the First Order, and we will let you live.” The steel behind his aloof voice is quite noticeable.

 

The man in the bed remains quiet.

 

“Maybe we can try this again tomorrow.” Poe Dameron says, bored. He turns to go, pounding three times on the door, a code of some sort, and the door opens from the outside. “And Rey? Rey is gone.”

 

The silence that joins him in Dameron’s wake grows louder and louder until it’s deafening. Those words ring in his very soul. He can feel nothing with the Force, he cannot reach out to her to ensure her safety, as he’s done multiple times a day the last few weeks with her. He doesn’t realize he’s breathing hard and quick until the edges of his vision start to blur. He expels air in the form of an anguished cry, pulling at his restraints desperately. Damn their needles, what use did he have in this forsaken galaxy if Rey wasn’t there with him? He screams at the walls, screams like a madman for them to kill him, get it over with, anything. He doesn’t realize he’s incoherent. He tries to calm himself, find his center, find the Force within himself, but where he so frequently reached inside of himself, he finds a blank wall, impenetrable and massive. His skin feels like it’s crawling.

 

He’d been through the most painful training of his life with Snoke, he’d killed his own flesh and blood, struck down defenseless children, but this. This. This is what he knows will be the absolute worst moment of his life.

 

***

 

Leia Organa looks through the viewport made of special transparisteel, at the image of Kylo Ren thrashing around on a medbed. She tries her best not to think of him as her son, but the similarities, the small details in his devastated face sought to prove her otherwise. She’s thankful Luke had stopped in to meditate on the cell, to block out all Force energies leaving and entering it. She doesn’t know if she could bear to experience the pain he’s feeling, or if she could resist taking hold of that familial connection again, a rung on a ladder just out of reach. She’d heard the whole conversation with him and Commander Dameron, and she was confused as to why he was reacting so violently to the news of Rey’s capture. Even Finn ( _Captain Finn_ , the thought fondly) hadn’t had such a reaction. Their intel suggests that Rey had partnered up with somebody on the Outer Rim, just after the _Millennium Falcon_ had gone haywire.

 

But with Kylo Ren? What could have possessed her to do that?

 

She remained there in the viewing room until the man had exhausted himself, nearly an hour later. The other Resistance leaders that had joined her there to watch Dameron speak with the prisoner had left hours ago, uncomfortable with her stone-faced observation, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. Her heart _ached_ when she heard a sob wrenched from the man, fear and frustration and anger and pain wrapped in a wordless cry for mercy. She instinctively lay a hand on the barrier, the anti-Force energy thrumming like some living thing beneath her palm. The man’s head was turned to the side, his thrashing had loosened the straps somewhat. His body shook softly in his grief. She was compelled to go to him, until a hand lay on her shoulder, startling her.

 

“General.” Poe Dameron greeted her, a tight, pained smile on his lips. She covered his hand with her own for a moment, a brief breach of formality between ranks. He dropped her hand and crossed his arms over his broad chest.

 

“What intel do you have on Rey?” she asks, her voice rough and raspy with witheld emotion.

 

“The Order took her offworld in an Epsilon-class ship, which most likely made its way to the _Finalizer_ , by the way the destroyer made its quick leap out of hyperspace. It headed back to the Unknown Regions, most likely to regroup with what remains of the fleet. This was a specific mission. They left him behind for a reason, took her for a reason. Intel branch has nothing to go against their beliefs that the Order intends to use her.”

 

“Another weapon?”

 

“Unknown. Another Knight of Ren was aboard the ship that took her, a woman, from what we can gather.” He shifts. “Nearly every branch is looking for her now, her AWOL status notwithstanding.”

 

“You know I never intended to charge her with anything like that.”

 

“You wouldn’t be so ruthless as to punish her for panicking. You never did with me.” he turns a smile on her, and it brightens her mood momentarily before they both look back through the viewport. “He’s hard to make out.” the pilot continues cryptically.

 

“How so?”

 

“There’s two ways I see it; He could be faking this whole act, this attachment to her. He’s reacting like a panicked lover would.” The thought makes Leia feel strange, uncomfortable in a way she can’t explain. “He’d be manipulating how we see him, take him from some creature of rage to a victim of love.” he speaks blandly, like this whole explanation bores him.

 

“And the other way?”

 

“He’s telling the truth.” and by the way he says it, Leia knows they both believe he is.

 

***

 

“Have the final preparations been made for the weapon?” General Hux asks, almost gleefully. This percieved cheer discomfits the officer walking with him, currently reporting to the man from a datapad.

 

“She’s as ready as she’ll ever be, sir.” the uncomfortable man says, hiding his emotions from his superior.

 

“I will be in attendance for the first test.” the General says, proud. This seems to upset the young captain very much, shifting his uniform straight down on his frame, a habit most officers have around their commanding officer. “Send details of the launch to my datapad, Captian Rokillem.”

 

“Sir.” the man says, acknowledging his dismissal. He’s got a very bad feeling about this.

 

***

 

_Deeper, you have to find the Force within you first._

 

He’s trying to meditate, and grasp ahold of the Force within him again. It can’t be gone; it’s been with him as long as he can remember. People come and go, and their presences with them. Emotions are just as fleeting, but the Force has always been with him, and it is strong with him, in his family, in his legacy, in his bones and heart and soul. For it to be ripped from him would be impossible, he knew this as gospel from a very young age.

 

He thinks, and hard. He knows Force-sensitive repellants are in the universe, mostly in the cities that were home to the Jedi Council, in the days before the Empire. The prejudices were vast on a city-planet like Coruscant, and he and Rey had come across Force-repressing collars, cloaks, doorways, and whole ships. It’s only logical that the Resistance would be in possession of a Force-repressing cell. He has no illusions that this could be anything but that.

 

But that would take a very powerful Force weilder to use and maintain. The negative Force signature he’s only just picking up on (thanks to his meditation) is fresh, and calm. That can only mean one thing. Luke Skywalker is here.

 

If Luke Skywalker is here, he can be persuaded to let him go save Rey, for he’s the only one that can.

 

***

 

Luke stands next to his twin, observing his nephew, his former padawan, his nightmare for the last fifteen years, in the cell he crafted with the Force. He watches Resistance prisoner think, no doubt meditating and figuring out more than he will let on knowing. His emotions are clashing, worry and concern for Rey conflicting with the confusion of her capture and the anger and pain he still feels toward his nephew, even after all these years, even seeing him restrained as effectively as he can be. “Has he said anything?” Luke asks.

 

“Not as of yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

 

“Don’t presume to know him, Leia.” he warns, wincing at how sharply his words come out. He knows she still grieves for Han, and in a way, Ben, but knows she can deal with it in her own way and shouldn’t be coddled. “He’s deceptive, and probably still aligned with the Dark Side.”

 

“You can’t tell, you can’t read him just as he can’t read you.” Leia snaps back at him. The soft glow from the cell interior betrays the true design of the structure. It could almost be a comforting room, if you squinted. Aside from the bed with restraints, and the hanging sacs of various sedatives, lethal and otherwise, the furniture was sparse but of good quality, as things come on D’Qar. He’d had to be sedated the entire trip back to the Resistance base, as a precaution. It would have been safer to keep him on a nondescript outpost, but Luke, in his stubbornness, refused to leave Ahch-To for anywhere other than D’Qar and the other planets in the Ileenium system.

 

“When will Dameron go back in to talk to him? He’s been sitting there by himself for too long. He’s brilliant,” he pauses, giving way to his reluctance to admit this. “And will figure out where he is, who he’s around, and how to break out in short time.” he lifts his chin, swallowing his pride. “I’ve been out of practice greatly, Leia.” he admits. “You have to act quickly, see what he wants, get it for him, get him to give you what you want, and let him go.”

 

“The council will never allow it.” she sighs, as much as she likes the idea of having her son around, she knows that his continued presence would only end in some kind of trial and death sentence.

 

“You and I know it’d be better to reduce as many casualties as possible when he leaves. This time, we can control the terms of which he does.”

 

***

 

The first thought Rey had when she awoke was, _this is familiar._ The second thought she had was, _it somehow feels worse._

 

She was back in some kind of restraint-type chair, secured at her ankles and wrists and one bar above her chest, tightened uncomfortably so she couldn't take deep breaths. She urged her body not to panic, surprised at how quickly her emotions had spiraled out of control. She calms herself, finding the Force within her but horrified when she could not grasp that link between her and Kylo Ren. She twists in her shackles, panic rising again. She whimpers and nearly screams in anxiety when her chest hits that immovable bar. The claustrophobic effect of the restraints is getting to her.

 

A door slides open and a droid walks in. Obviously they don't trust her with another stormtrooper again. She swallows nervously and tries to remember how to manipulate droids, like Master Luke had taught her to do. Her training slips between her fingers like sand, like she'd never been taught. Her mind goes a thousand places at once, more than her panic attacks usually take her. She wants so badly to curl into a ball but she knows she's just going to exhaust herself from her fidgeting and writhing.

 

“Prisoner. Cease your struggling.” The droid says. It's a newer model but with almost ancient programming, personality chips nonexistent. Not almost human-like, the way C-3PO is. She stops her panicked movements and thinks. She could very much do with a familiar face.

 

Why couldn't she feel the connection anymore? He wasn't dead, she would know. The thought unsettles her that she knows she would know if he was dead. They forged sabers together. There is no deeper connection than their Force bond. She wonders if he's too far to reach her. But that never stopped him before. Was he concealing himself from her? That's ridiculous.

 

The droid, uninterested in her frenzied train of thought, milled about the room, and at one point gets too close to her. Rey snarls and lashes out with the Force at the mech. It crumples to the floor.

 

This time, two stormtrooper a come in, pushing her back against the damned chair she's in. She struggles but in vain as they clamp a heavy collar around her neck. She almost laughs at them. They think she is so weak as to be intimidated by shocks?

 

Almost as soon as she thinks it, unending fatigue attacks her body, almost all of her energy, physical and Force alike, drained from her body. She cries out weakly as she sags, victim to whatever negative energy she's being exposed to. She can barely will herself to breathe.

 

Her last thought before she blacks out is a desperate plea through the Force, calling for anybody to save her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize greatly for the delay - school is really railing me right now. I'm determined to make it through to the end, though! Thank you all for the amazing comments and spectacular love <3
> 
> Also, [here is the quote I changed a little in the Or of this chapter!](http://bit.ly/21038u9)


	4. drop the dagger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren is on his best behavior, but doesn't like what he sees when they let him out of his cell. Leia endures, barely. Luke re-evaluates his faith.
> 
> Or, The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Son.
> 
> Chapter titles from The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance.

The steady thumping of his heart annoys him to no end. There’s no other sound in the room, and he has been on his best behavior, in hopes of the Resistance possibly letting him go. He desperately needs to leave this anti-Force chamber; it’s killing him slowly, which is another reason why his heartbeat irritates him. When he was with Rey, he could feel her heartbeat, a steady pulse of life through the Force. He'd been lulled to sleep countless nights by that satisfying connection when they'd been light-years apart, he in Hutt Space and she on the jungle planet. It all seemed like ages ago instead of just weeks. Now, his insomnia seems to end him, slowly and dispassionately. He can’t even sleep in the monotony of his cell.

 

Isolation was no stranger to him; in fact, he’d been in the company of himself more often than not under Snoke’s tutelage. Most of his training was done via the mental link between master and student. It makes his skin crawl just to think of those times. He was never alone in his head, and never had a private thought to himself, lest he be punished for any thoughts of discontent. It was terrifying, to say the least. He’d told Rey about it, once.

 

***

 

“Tell me about how you were trained.” Rey said, her accent drawling into something bordering on unintelligible.

 

“Why?” he asked, defending his mind from her drunken surge forward into his thoughts and memories.

 

“Because I want to know. You wouldn’t lie to my face, so I have to ask you everything.” she rolled her eyes, cheeks flushed. She rubbed at her forehead, a habit she has while drinking.

 

“I almost never saw my master.” he said softly, like the dreaded Snoke were listening in on their conversation now. “He was always there, though, making sure I never got a moment of rest.” he sighed. “I think I slept a great deal less than you at my age.” he said, acknowledging her tough upbringing, or lack thereof. “I’d be thrown into combat drills, I didn’t even have my lightsaber for the first year or so. Hand-to-hand was emphasized at all times. To be complacent in one area of fighting is to kill yourself in the face of another.” he said this like it’d been beaten into his mind endlessly.

 

Rey’s intoxicated smile slipped into a sobered expression, and she crawled over to him on their pushed-together mattresses. She pressed her body against his, resting her hands on his gently, for comfort. “Master Luke didn’t speak to me for a week when I first arrived to the island.” she sighed, and probably shouldn’t be telling him this. But he knew he wouldn’t betray her. “I hadn’t even come to train with him?” she said, adorably confused. “I was just wanting to bring him back to Leia, and the Resistance.” she sighed into his neck, distracting him from the somber subject for a fleeting moment. “And he thought I wanted to be trained.” she shook her head. “I didn’t want any of this, I didn’t.” he felt her shoulders shake and noted with surprise that she was crying, actually crying. He hadn’t seen her like this more than a handful of times, especially when they’d been talking about the Resistance, or drinking heavily, like tonight.

 

He gingerly wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and pressed a kiss to her hair. They’re both so broken, in their own ways.

 

***

 

Luke Skywalker sits in meditation, frowning in concentration as he sweeps his Force abilities out into the known galaxy, and even further into the Unknown Regions, where the First Order was most likely operating from. He’s known for an age that Snoke was concealing their evil presence with some kind of Dark side Force, but Luke knew how to look for that, thanks to his years of productive exile, gathering information and teachings from the great teachers tied into the Force.

 

After a few hours sitting in a quite uncomfortable position, he feels a blip of a presence, weak and helpless, but familiar. _Rey_. He almost loses his concentration. He didn’t expect to find her. Making note of the location, he focuses his presence in that direction, seeking her across the parsecs between them.

 

The blip turns into a horrifying twisting pain in his brain, and he holds his head in his hands as he is hit with licking flames against his mind, a sick poison of the mind, of...the Force? Rey’s sharp screams and cries for help lash against the inside of his skull. Her draining helplessness snap him from his meditation, and he stumbles over to the side of his hard bed to dry heave, nausea still spinning around in his body.

 

Leia. He has to tell Leia he found her, and she’s in trouble.

 

Once he’s regained his strength, drawing on the power of the Force to guide him to her. His own physical mind was too frazzled to make any sense of this underground base. The door to the General’s office was opening as he came up to it, Leia sensing his presence in the Force.

 

“Luke!” she says, ever glad to see him, but worry draws over her face like a cloud over the sun. “What is it?” she asks quickly, on the alert.

 

“Rey. She’s in trouble. She—that’s his cell! Why are they taking off the restraints?” his attention is taken to a small surveillance holopad he knows is trained on Kylo Ren’s cell.

 

“We’re moving him to an augmented version of the cell you made for him, he’s going to feed us more intelligence, and he’s been behaving very well, Luke. What do you mean, Rey is in trouble?” worry accents her normally strong voice.

 

“You’re going to let him connect him back to the Force?!” the striking fear in his voice makes her every hair stand on end. “They have a _Force bond_ , Leia, he’s going to go searching for her first thing, she’s going to _cripple him—_ ”

 

They’re both looking at the screen, now, as a few Resistance fighters stand the tall man up on his feet, and walk him to the open door. The Skywalker twins watch, holding their breath, as their youngest relative takes his first step out of the cell, in every restraint known to the galaxy.

 

Kylo Ren pauses just outside the threshold, concentrating and breathing deeply. Luke’s tense emotions fill the room, mingling with Leia’s own. The man in chains jerks forward a moment, as though he’s stumbled on something. But the guards surrounding him have their worry on full broadcast. There’s no audiofeed on the holopad, but they both know the guards are shouting frantically out the hallway. Leia’s face contorts in horror as she watches her son crumple to the ground, as if fainting. Luke has already swept from the room, but she can only watch her son seize against the guard’s grip, mouth open in some kind of cry of pain. Leia follows her brother to the detention block.

 

She can hear the screaming all the way from her office, and it only gets louder and scarier to listen to the closer she gets. The lights are flickering dangerously, like the base is under attack. Her hands are shaking as she makes it to the threshold of Kylo Ren’s previously-inhabited cell.

 

His throat must be in considerable pain to be making this much noise. She thinks she barely makes out Rey’s name as she came closer. The very name sounded ripped from his chest.

 

It sounds like the noise her heart made when Han was killed.

 

Luke is trying to channel into his mind, but it’s obvious he isn’t an expert in this particular area of the Force. Luke’s bond with Leia, and in some way, with Han, was nowhere as deep as the one her son shares with Rey.

 

“Knock him out!” one of the guards shouts, somewhere among the screaming, and Luke waves a hand forcefully over the shouting man’s face, one moment contorted in unfathomable pain, and the next, a temporary mask of injured peace.

 

The silence deafens the ears of all within range of the man on the floor. Luke looks up at Leia, breathing hard, eyes full of worry and confusion.

 

“You have some explaining to do.” Leia says, before turning to the guards, instructing them to take Kylo Ren to the other cell.

  


***

 

_He’s gritting his teeth through the boring trial, staring blankly ahead at the wall instead of the droning woman. They’re wasting precious time on all this. He can hardly keep it together, with Rey’s agony constantly in his mind, as if she were suffering just next to him, screaming in his ear. The sentence he gets is forced servitude under his uncle, who frowns and won’t speak with him at all._

 

_(He looks at his mother as she sends him off again, and someone claims this as a victory)_

 

 _It’s a month before he’s cleared to go off-world, and yet another week after that before they’re cleared to go looking for Rey’s hidden location. They find her in less than a day, thanks to the Force bond, fading quickly. He’s constantly sick on the transport ship, like he’s being subject to_ her _torture in real-time._

 

_(Finding her was easy enough, he could guide his way through the galaxy blind to her. He just wanted to stop her pain, just wanted to stop the pain.)_

 

**_He’s holding her limp body in his arms, sobbing in anguish. He’s lost her. He’s lost her. He will never get her back. The person on the other side of his connection is not there._ **

 

***

 

“The Unknown Regions?” Leia asks, sitting on a low stool across from the cell. A small army of Resistance guards stand nervously at the end of the hall, out of earshot.

 

Luke takes a minute to appreciate his twin. No matter the circumstance or setting, Leia never fails to make herself look regal, despite the actual prison cell before her, and the condition of her quasi-military garb. He shakes himself from his thoughts to answer her question.

 

“That’s where they’d hidden Starkiller Base.” he begins. “It’s not like they’d want to stay around the Mid Rim while hosting a Force-sensitive hostage. I know the general direction of where to point a reconnaissance ship.” he explains, marking out coordinates on a datapad as he speaks, handing it to her once satisfied.

 

“If you’re certain.” she sighs, a bit of that regal nature slipping from her weathered grip. Leia has been beaten down so much over the years, losing her family, her planet, her friends in the Rebellion, her son, Korr Sella on Hosnia Prime, Han… Luke owes it to her to be a little dependable.

 

“Very certain.” he says firmly. She makes a few taps on the pad, then, and he knows they’re being sent out to her Black Squad, famous for their efficiency and small footprint.

 

“Can you tell me more?” she asks, rubbing a hand over her face, setting the datapad down.

 

“There’s not really much to tell. She was calling for help.” he shakes his head, disappointed that he couldn’t tell her more. “From what I could feel off of him,” he motions to the man lying on the cell floor. “It was an...unspeakable pain. I was only...it was like I was only getting the readings off of him, but even then, it felt like sticking my hand into flames. There was...it felt…” he shakes his head again, visibly disturbed. “Draining. Like the Force was being drained from her, Leia.” his voice had dropped into a shaky whisper, and he looked thirty years younger, as lost as the young farmboy he’d been when she’d met him.

 

“What can we do?” she asks softly.

 

“I think...I think he’s had a vision of the future, through the Force. But...there were two courses of action. One of them was where we waited to go after her, and the other was where we didn’t. They both ended the same way.” his face crumpled into despair. She felt her heart drop into her toes.

 

“We shouldn’t wait.” she decides. Glad to have something to do, she bumps the priority level of the recon mission for Black Squad, this was possibly the most urgent thing the famed group of pilots have ever done, next to imploding Starkiller Base.

 

“Rey will be lost either way.” Luke forewarns.

 

“You trust in the Force too much to try to change the future.” she scolds. “We can still save Rey.”

 

***

 

When Kylo Ren wakes in a new cell, his disorientation masks the resounding headache he can hardly remember having. His Force abilities have returned, but not back to full strength. He guesses that the cell they’ve moved him to only has limited negative Force protection. He still can’t feel Rey. He groans as he sits up, holding his head in his hands, the pressure overwhelming.

 

“You’re awake.” a voice says. He knows all it too well.

 

His blood has turned to ice, despair and nausea welling up in his very soul. He can’t look up into the eyes of his uncle, into the eyes of such pain he could never begin to fathom. Ever a martyr, he makes himself look up.

 

Barely-concealed fear and disgust lie beneath the signature blank expression of the Jedi. His voice is raw and ruined when he speaks.

 

“I knew you were here.” he knows it’s not befitting of his ‘good behavior’ to be snarling at the Jedi Master.

 

“I’m not interested in playing your childish games of pride.” he sighs, standing. “I’m going to lay this out for you very specifically, in terms you may or may not understand.” the condescension bleeds freely from the older man’s voice. “Rey is in trouble.”

 

The statement sends all the missing pieces to Kylo Ren’s head, and his stomach drops as he finally remembers the vision he’d experienced. “I need to go to her.” he states, standing shakily. He must have hit the ground hard, before.

 

“I know.” the older man answers.

 

“She’s going to die.” he chokes out.

 

“I know.” comes the solemn reply.

 

“Please let me go to her. Please let me rescue her. I’ll destroy everything in my path.” his vow is solemn and sends a shiver up Luke’s spine when he hears it.

 

“Your mother has already authorized a ship to fly out to the Unknown Regions as soon as you’re fit to leave.”

 

“I’m fit to leave now!” Kylo Ren protests.

 

“That’s not up to you. That’s up to me.” Luke’s voice booms in the small space, sending Kylo Ren back to a time where that voice maybe would have scared him. “And until you can promise your mother that you will come back to her, you will not leave this base.”

 

That gives the man pause, gears working in his head until it clicks that he could easily do with swallowing his precious pride in exchange for being allowed to ensure Rey’s safety. He could easily do it. He nods, and this surprises Luke.

 

“I need to go.” he insists. _I wouldn’t lie to her just to get my way, you know that._

 

It frightens Luke to hear his nephew’s voice in his head again, communicating the way they used to, before Han and Leia started fracturing apart from one another. The shaken Jedi calls a guard down to go get the General. “Her son is awake.” he adds, looking into the eyes of the man in the cell.

 

***

 

It doesn’t take long for Leia to get to the lift that takes her to the detention level. She’d been pacing in front of the doors for hours since the recon squad had left. She pockets her shaking hands, breaking regulation for the sake of appearances. She knows her nerves must be showing from all over her face, but she faces danger head-on, like she does every time. Only this time, she feels a thread of nervousness because isn’t this how her husband had died, too?

 

There’s no time to ponder that before the lift doors are opening and the nearest guard is calling attention on deck. “Carry on.” she says absently, walking down the hallway as if in a dream, to the presences of her brother and her son. The conversation in that corner of the cell block had ceased prior to her arrival, she senses.

 

She’s not prepared to see her son’s face in person. The last time she’d looked him in the eye, was the last time she’d seen him before he’d gone off to train with Luke. He’d looked at her with betrayal, hurt, and confusion, then. He’d been a scared little boy, not knowing why he was going away from his family, as broken as they all were at the time.

 

Now, those intense brown eyes looked at her with the deepest regret, pain, and sadness. They’re both thinking about Han. She wants so desperately to hurt the man that hurt her heart, her life, so intensely, but cannot when that person is her flesh and blood. In a way it makes the entire betrayal that much worse.

 

She has to be professional, and she takes a deep breath. She thinks she sees her son’s heart break as she puts her feelings behind her to focus on the mission at hand.

 

“Well?” she asks, trying to feign some detachment, trying to fake anything than what she’s feeling.

 

“If you’re giving me a ship to rescue Rey with, you might not get it back. But I will come back with her.” he says. “That...that I promise.” he says, and flinches a little, like he’s looking straight into the sun by talking to her. “I can’t—”

 

“That’s sufficient, we can deal with this later, son.” she says flatly, before he can say something sentimental that won’t let her let him go. She turns on her heel, and tries not to think about the small noise her son makes at her back.

 

***

 

Once she was significantly far from the detention cell, one of her closest aides comes to her side.

 

“You may as well raise the victory flags now, General.” she speaks boldly, which gets a quizzical expression from her superior. “That man will tear down the entire galaxy to find Rey. Seeing as the greatest adversary we face is holding her, we may as well have won the war.”

 

The thought lifts her spirits but crushes her heart.


End file.
